


I Won't Dance

by CitrusVanille



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M, M/M, Pre-Relationship, Songfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-04-03
Updated: 2006-04-03
Packaged: 2018-04-13 20:21:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,512
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4535973
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CitrusVanille/pseuds/CitrusVanille
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Gryffindors throw a party. (After the events of You're So Vain.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Won't Dance

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [You're So Vain](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4502283) by [CitrusVanille](https://archiveofourown.org/users/CitrusVanille/pseuds/CitrusVanille). 



> For A, because I promised you JPLE fic when I dragged you into this mess.

Flushed with triumph over the standing ovation the Marauders had received at the end of their set, the four boys snuck into Hogsmeade to stock up on drinks and snacks for the party that was already in full swing in the common room.

By the time they returned, someone had set up and charmed a record player, and nearly half the house had paired off to dance. The four set out the bottles of butterbeer on a table along with some of the snacks. Sirius and James, still high on adrenaline, threw licorice wands and packs of chocolate frogs into the crowd, laughing at the scattered indignant cries from the victims of the flying sweets.

Remus shook his head at their antics, popped the cap on a butterbeer, and settled in a chair by the fire to watch.

“They never run out of energy, do they?” Peter asked, sitting next to him with a bottle of his own.

“I still can’t decide if that’s a good thing,” Remus replied. He sipped his drink and sighed, relaxing back into the cushions.

“Hey, Evans!” James’s voice rang out over the noise of the revelers and the music. “Dance with me!”

“Give up, Potter!” Lily’s voice called out from somewhere across the room.

Remus and Peter exchanged a look, and fought back their laughter.

“Poor Prongs,” Sirius sighed dramatically, sliding over the arm of the couch and half into Remus’s lap. “He just doesn’t seem to understand the meaning of ‘no’.”

“That couldn’t be because he’s been getting lessons on negative answers from you, Mr. Padfoot, could it?” Remus inquired innocently.

Sirius clapped one hand to his chest and the back of the other to his forehead, collapsing across Remus’s legs. “You wound me, Mr. Moony,” he declared. “Your words are as poisoned arrows to my heart.”

“Mm.” Remus took a large swallow of butterbeer, his face rather red, and looked determinedly over his shoulder at the dancers. “Where’d James go?” he asked.

Peter turned and scanned the crowd. “I don’t see him. Think he’s gone to find Evans and ask her at close range?”

Sirius sat up and also peered at the milling and dancing students. “I hope not. She’ll hit him, whether with a hex or fist is anyone’s bet. Two sickles says it’s a hex.”

“Three says it’s her fist, if she actually does anything violent,” Remus countered absently, still searching for their missing friend. “If she hexes him, he might hex her back, but he’d never physically strike a girl.”

Sirius eyed him. “You’ve discussed this with her?”

“Of course, though I don’t think she’ll do anything at all, she’s not quite as – oh, there he is! What’s he doing with the record player?”

“What?” Sirius and Peter both swiveled around again to see their mussy-haired friend clearing his way across the floor.

Remus swore violently and jumped to his feet. “He’s headed straight for her! We’ve got to stop him before –”

But James had already reached Lily and her friends, and the music began as he climbed onto the table in front of her.

“ _Think of what you’re losing by constantly refusing to dance with me_ ,” James crooned into a microphone he hadn’t had the minute before. “ _You’d be the idol of France with me_ …”

Lily was staring, shaking her head, mouth working silently.

The rest of the room had gone rather still, everyone watching to see what she would do. Remus, Sirius, and Peter, all on their feet now, shifted carefully closer, hoping to be on hand if this (‘this’ being Lily) blew up in their friend’s face.

“ _And yet you sit there and shake your foolish head dramatically_ ,” James continued. “ _While I wait here so ecstatically_ …”

Lily closed her mouth, and her eyes glittered.

“ _You just look and say emphatically_ –”

“ _Not this season_!” Lily, on her feet now, cut James off. She had no microphone, but her clear voice carried well without one. “ _There’s a reason_!”

James was gaping at her in shock.

The rest of the house held their collective breaths.

“ _I won’t dance_ ,” Lily sang, “ _don’t ask me. I won’t dance, don’t ask me. I won’t dance, monsieur, with you. My heart won’t let my feet do things they should do_.”

“ _You know what_?” James had recovered. “ _You’re lovely_.”

“ _And so what_?” Lily shrugged. “ _I’m lovely_.”

“ _But, oh, what you do to me_ ,” James was grinning now, as he sang. “ _I’m like an ocean wave that’s bumped on the shore_ ,” he jumped down to kneel in front of her. “ _I feel so absolutely stumped on the floor_.” He stood and grabbed her hand, whirling her around.

Her robes whirled elegantly about her and they danced, moving gracefully away from the table and into the open area of the room, people moving quickly out of their way. “ _When you dance you’re charming and you’re gentle_ ,” she sang after several moments. “ _Especially when you do the Continental_.”

“ _But this feeling isn’t purely mental_ ,” James returned, spinning her again. “ _For, Heaven rest us! I’m not asbestos, honey_!”

Someone laughed.

“ _And that’s why_ ,” Lily pulled sharply out of James’s hold, but she was flushed and smiling faintly, “ _I won’t dance. Why should I? I won’t dance. How could I? I won’t dance, merci beaucoup. I know that music leads the way to romance_ …”

“ _So if I hold you in my arms_ …” James tried to take her hands again.

Lily, bright red now, stepped back. “ _I won’t dance_.”

She turned and moved quickly back to her friends, who all rose quickly to their feet at her approach.

Lily glanced across the room, met Remus’s eyes, shot him an embarrassed grin, and vanished up the stairs to the girls’ dorms, her friends just behind her.

The entire crowd burst into cheers, whistling and clapping. There were even a few catcalls.

James, a rather dazed expression on his face, turned, seeking his friends with his eyes. He spotted them and somehow stumbled towards them.

They ushered him quickly to a seat as the other Gryffindors went back to their own lives and the party started up again.

The hazel-eyed boy’s mouth opened and closed a few times, as though he was trying to speak, but couldn’t.

Peter solemnly handed over his butterbeer.

James stared at it for a moment, as if unsure what to do with it.

“You drink from it,” Remus informed him. “Like this.” He took a swallow from his own bottle. “See? Easy. Now you try.”

James tilted the bottle into his mouth, swallowed, coughed, and drank again. “She danced with me,” he said at last, still looking quite awe-struck.

“That she did,” Sirius agreed.

“She danced with me, and we sang together.”

“Like something from a film,” Peter remarked, looking quite nearly as awed as James himself.

“Very Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers,” Remus concurred.

Sirius looked at him. “Who?”

“ _Who_?” Remus’s eyes widened slightly. “You don’t know who Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers are?”

Sirius shook his head, baffled.

James (still out of it) and Peter were also looking at Remus curiously.

“They’re actors. Famous actors. Dancers. Singers.” Remus was rather at a loss. “ _Top Hat_? _Swing Time_? _The Gay Divorcee_?”

“The _what_?” Peter snorted.

Remus frowned at him. “They’re films! Excellent films! You’ve never heard of them?”

The three boys shook their heads.

“What about _Follow the Fleet_? No? _Shall We Dance_?”

“You want to?” Sirius asked, then instantly snapped his mouth shut, looking as though he’d swallowed his tongue.

No one noticed.

Remus looked ready to have a seizure. “How can you never have heard of them? They’re _classics_!”

“Breathe, Moony,” Sirius soothed, putting his hands on Remus’s shoulders. “Breathe. Remember, we don’t all have access to Muggle entertainment.”

Remus took several deep breaths. “Right,” he nodded. “Right.”

“She danced with me,” James said again, voice soft.

Remus and Sirius looked back at him, Sirius still with his hands on Remus’s shoulders.

“Do you think…” James’s voice was even softer, and hard to hear over the noise of the party going on around them. “Do you think maybe… maybe she likes me after all? At least a little?”

Remus grinned. “Maybe,” he replied.

Three heads swiveled to look at him.

“A little,” he amended, fighting to keep his grin from growing.

“A little,” James echoed, a happy glow starting to appear on his face. Then, all at once, the happy glow turned to panic. “But I don’t know anything about girls!” he wailed. “What do I do if I ask her to the next Hogsmeade weekend and she says ‘ _yes_ ’?”

Remus and Sirius burst out laughing, Sirius leaning on Remus so he could laugh at his alarmed friend over the brunet’s shoulder. Even Peter was snickering.

“I don’t think you need to worry about that quite yet,” Remus finally managed to assure his friend. “She still thinks you’re immature and big-headed.”

“Oh,” James said, and calmed right down. “That’s okay then.” The silly, dazed grin reappeared on his face. “She danced with me.

Sirius and Remus exchanged a look, and both collapsed again into laughter.

**END**


End file.
